A Thousand Mornings: Poems

"I go down to the shore in the morning / and depending on the hour the waves / are rolling in or moving out," Mary Oliver writes in this first poem from A Thousand Mornings, "and I say, oh, I am miserable, / what shall— / what should I do? And the sea says / in its lovely voice: / Excuse me, I have work to do." The Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winner wastes no words in the 36 poems here, some of them remarkably brief but all the more demanding of contemplation. Often inspired by the marshland and coastline of Provincetown, Massachusetts, Oliver shares the wonder of dawn, the grace of animals, and the transformative power of attention.